Remailers and ecash

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Just out of a curiousity, why is it that no remailers accept ecash?
(This is not a jibe at remailer operators or authors of remailer
software.  I am really curious if this is a "didn't get to it yet"
sort of thing, or if there's something hard about it.)

The brutally simple way to do this would be to generate an ecash
certificate, made out to cash, and tack it at the beginning of a
message which is then encrypted for the remailer.  The modifications
to the remailer software seem (to me) to be slight since you just call
the Digicash application and ask it to try depositing the payment.
If it works, the message is handled.

Since everybody is in the habit of not paying, you could just give
priority to paying customers.  People who don't want to pay get their
mail delayed by four hours.  Some people may pay to expedite some
messages but not others.

There are probably better ways to do it, but that would get it up and
running.

What aspects of this problem am I missing?

Monty Cantsin
Editor in Chief
Smile Magazine
http://www.neoism.org/squares/smile_index.html
http://www.neoism.org/squares/cantsin_10.html

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Adam Back wrote:
> I think someone did write the code.  I think it was Sameer, and I
> think he ran a remailer with this feature for a while.  I expect the
> code is on the berkeley ftp site somewhere.

Yes, it was a nymserver (omega.c2.org) where the user paid up front per
month per nym, and then for traffic over a certain amount.

Lucky Green wrote:
> You certainly could use DigiCash's software with Type 1 remailers. Though
> why anybody would want to pay for a service as insecure as Type 1
> remailers is beyond me. Type 1 remailers should be removed from service.
> 
> Furthermore, the barrier to entry is too high for the consumer. All these
> problems are about to be solved by third party software. Perhaps then we
> will see for-pay remailers.


What people often forget is that these structures tend to evolve thru
incremental changes rather than the immediate adoption of entirely new
paradigms.  The 'barrier to entry', is often the deciding factor.

omega.c2.org was a failure because, despite having features which
(nearly) everyone agreed were desirable, the up-front cost was too
high.  Shortly thereafter, I started a nymserver which, despite having
lower security and fewer features, featured a relatively low barrier
to entry.  This nymserver was so popular that it became the basis for
all the current nymservers.

Type-1 remailers were (and are) useful because they provided a system
which could be operated with low initial investment.  After providing
a proof-of-concept, they became the basis for PGP-enhanced remailers,
latency and reordering experiments, reply blocks, and finally mixmaster.

Various anonymous message pools were tried, and failed. 
alt.anonymous.messages worked because most people already have a
newsreader.

Same goes for blind ecash, DC-nets, secret-shared message pools, etc.
Despite our conceptual ability to describe the technology that we want,
we too often forget the cost of building the infrastructure to support
it.

So, assuming that for-pay remailers are the goal, how do we get there?
If attaching chaum-cash to remailer messages were the answer, everyone
would be doing it.  I think we need to look at the situation at a more
basic level.

Money can be defined as the lowest common denominator thing of value
shared by the greatest number of people.  (Does this describe Mark Twain
accounts?  No.)  So, how else might one pay for remailer usage?  Setting
up your own remailer is the obvious answer, but there are others, such
as selling cpu-cycles.

One potential scenario is "I'll let you use my remailer if you let me use
yours," where people earn remailer credits by remailing other people's
messages.  These remailer credits allow one to send anonymous messages
via other remailers.  Once these remailer-credits become sufficiently
valuable, they can be sold using whatever monetary system is popular at
the time.
 
Another potential scenario is to assume that a.a.m is going to continue
to grow until it becomes unwieldy.  Then people will have to pay someone
to store-and-forward the messages, or split it into smaller pools for
which people can provide their own support by running small news servers
on their machines.

Both of the above scenarios provide the desired end, which is that people
pay for their remailer usage, and neither involves the (unlikely) model
where people attach digicash to their remailer messages using the current
system.

> Another potential scenario is to assume that a.a.m is going to continue
> to grow until it becomes unwieldy.  Then people will have to pay someone
> to store-and-forward the messages, or split it into smaller pools for
> which people can provide their own support by running small news servers
> on their machines.

This is exactly what is happening.  In fact one ISP mentioned recently on
this list keeps alt.anonymous.messages traffic for an extended period of
time for their customers.

On a more practical note, if the user downloads all the messages, or uses
secret-sharing techniques, the ISP can sell accounts using non-anonymous
payment methods and not know which users are receiving which messages.
No blind ecash needed.

At 3:18 AM -0400 9/27/97, Anonymous wrote:
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>
>Just out of a curiousity, why is it that no remailers accept ecash?
>(This is not a jibe at remailer operators or authors of remailer
>software.  I am really curious if this is a "didn't get to it yet"
>sort of thing, or if there's something hard about it.)

One item which has been missing is an accessible API. (The Digicash
merchant software is, I believe, designed for online use only.)  This need
is about to be fulfilled.  Another item is a service to sell/redeem ecash
w/o need of a bank account and supporting client software.  This too is
about to become available.

--Steve

At 03:18 AM 9/27/97 -0400, Anonymous (Monty Cantsin) wrote:
>Just out of a curiousity, why is it that no remailers accept ecash?
>
>The brutally simple way to do this would be to generate an ecash
>certificate, made out to cash, and tack it at the beginning of a
>message which is then encrypted for the remailer.

The answer to your question may be to first recast your questions and ask
why would someone want to attach ecash?  I assume you are trying to "pay"
for the email you send.  This goes against the general model of the
internet.  Unlike the phone company, the net peers freely with no
interconnection charges, so inter lata charges do not have to be tracked
and collected.  This allows for a flat rate pricing scheme.  For remailers,
this flat rate is generally zero dollars, i.e. free.

There are remailers of various types who offer services for a charge of
some sort.  This is generally a flat rate fee, either per month, or per
year.  There is likely no desire to price on a per item basis.  If there
were, I would think it would be in the millicent range of pricing.

If I were to set up a for pay remailing system, I would prefer to have a
per month, or per year fee.  This is more for the nym model of remailer.  I
assume you mean the Type-I such as you are using now.  It would be
interesting to setup as a test, but I don't see there would be any market
for it.

  -- Robert Costner                  Phone: (770) 512-8746
     Electronic Frontiers Georgia    mailto:pooh@efga.org  
     http://www.efga.org/            run PGP 5.0 for my public key

Monty Cantsin writes:
> Just out of a curiousity, why is it that no remailers accept ecash?
> (This is not a jibe at remailer operators or authors of remailer
> software.  I am really curious if this is a "didn't get to it yet"
> sort of thing, or if there's something hard about it.)

I think someone did write the code.  I think it was Sameer, and I
think he ran a remailer with this feature for a while.  I expect the
code is on the berkeley ftp site somewhere.

Adam
-- 
Now officially an EAR violation...
Have *you* violated EAR today? --> http://www.dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/rsa/

print pack"C*",split/\D+/,`echo "16iII*o\U@{$/=$z;[(pop,pop,unpack"H*",<>
)]}\EsMsKsN0[lN*1lK[d2%Sa2/d0<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<J]dsJxp"|dc`

>The answer to your question may be to first recast your questions and ask
>why would someone want to attach ecash?  I assume you are trying to "pay"
>for the email you send.  This goes against the general model of the
>internet.  Unlike the phone company, the net peers freely with no
>interconnection charges, so inter lata charges do not have to be tracked
>and collected.  This allows for a flat rate pricing scheme.  For remailers,
>this flat rate is generally zero dollars, i.e. free.

You get what you pay for.

>
>There are remailers of various types who offer services for a charge of
>some sort.  This is generally a flat rate fee, either per month, or per
>year.  There is likely no desire to price on a per item basis.  If there
>were, I would think it would be in the millicent range of pricing.

When remail use is casual and protects rather innocuous content then little
if any can be charged.  When content and identity protection is important
to the sender than a larger, but probably still small amount is fair.  I
would be willing to spend a few cents for each hop from reliable remailers.

>
>If I were to set up a for pay remailing system, I would prefer to have a
>per month, or per year fee.  This is more for the nym model of remailer.  I
>assume you mean the Type-I such as you are using now.  It would be
>interesting to setup as a test, but I don't see there would be any market
>for it.

In business, one can never tell if there's a market until the product or
service reaches sufficient audience.  Some of the most successful products
(e.g., Sony's Walkman and the Internet) were roundly rejected by industry
pundits and marketeers prior to introduction.

--Steve